Doping mechanisms of Sn in In2O3 powder studied using 119Sn Mossbauer spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction

The doping mechanism of Sn in In2O3 (ITO) powder was investigated using Sn-119 transmission Mossbauer spectroscopy (TMS)and X-ray diffraction (XRD) in view of the chemical state of Sn. Deconvolution analyses of TMS spectra revealed that there was substitutional Sn4+ coordinated not only by 6 oxygen atoms [Sn-ln] but also by 7 or 8 oxygen atoms, for the samples with doping concentrations higher than 5 at.%. The amount of such electrically deactivated Sn4+ (coordination number of 7 or 8) increased with increasing doping concentration, which was quantitatively consistent with the decrease in doping efficiency. Precise XRD analyses indicated a systematic increase in the lattice constant with increasing doping concentration from 0.5 to 7 at.%. The increase in lattice constant was explained in terms of a repulsive force among tetravalent [Sn-ln] (coordination number of 6) with higher effective charge than In3+, which was also consistent with the results on the coordination of Sn4+ obtained through TMS analyses.